We are sitting on our honeymoon bed in the honeymoon suite. We are in a state of honeymoon, in our honey month. These words are so sweet: honey, moon. This bed is so big, we could live on it. We have been happily marooned -- honey marooned -- on this bed for days.

The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method.

Topiary has always seemed like a good occupation, comparable in some ways to writing short fiction.

I don't abandon stories once I've started working on them. Once I sit down and start a story, I'll be damned if I'm going to give up on it. But I do reject most of the ideas for stories that I come up with.

Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.

I've gotten a little superstitious about listening to music when I write. Once a story is going somewhere, I keep listening to the same music whenever I work on that story. It seems to help me keep in voice, and alternatively, if I need to make some kind of dramatic shift, I'll go and put on something different to shake myself awake...

You get a lot of narrative energy from people who make really big mistakes, who act against their best interests, who do things that turn out to have serious consequences. It's very hard make a story out of people doing the right thing over and over again.